“Will you be staying with Cissy, then?” she whispered with a glance toward the pallet where the girl lay. “Only the tanner – him as has been wanting her – he went off to the tavern. He was cursing all the way and saying he will return for what he was promised.”

Nan nodded, and wondered if she should say anything more about her plans, what little she had of them. It was so strange, to be looked at in this way by these girls – as though she knew what to do, or had any kind of authority.

From her memory rose a vision of the woman who had put herself between Nan and that lustful lord so long ago, how she stood so proud and tall and unyielding. And then she thought of her lady, burning with conviction and radiating power as she carried Nan away to safety. They had seemed avenging angels to her, the women who had saved her. Had they felt this way, deep inside? Uncertain and fearful and small?

“She’s a good girl,” said Rosy, her eyes on the sleeping child. “It’s not a bad place here, truly. But I do remember well how I had dreams of escaping this life once. It’s a hard thing for a girl to accustom herself to.”

Nan looked at this young woman who looked no more than sixteen years old, who was already so jaded and yet still wistful. “Where did you dream you would go,” she asked, “if ever you escaped?”

“To the sisters of the Magdalene,” she replied promptly. “I will go someday, if ever I find a way to manage it.”

A convent. It might be a solution, if there were no other way.

Nan pulled her inside the room so they could speak in the assurance that none would hear them. She questioned the girl, and learned how as a child Rosy had hoped to live with Benedictine sisters. But having no dowry to give the Church, she fell into working life instead, and then into a whore’s life a year ago. She had never intended to stray so far from decency, she said, but then no one did. There were few options when circumstances were dire.

All the while she spoke, Nan looked between these two girls and thanked God, over and over again. Good fortune and unexpected kindness and unearned mercy, that’s all that had kept her from a place like this. She was painfully aware that the only real difference between her and her sister was their luck.

That was what she had told herself these last few days. Now she knew there was something more than circumstance, something fundamental in their natures. You are so different none would believe you were sisters, Aunt Mary had said. She had tried to warn her, but Nan had not wanted to believe it. She still did not want to believe it.